Former government infectious disease leader Anthony Fauci provided millions of American taxpayer dollars to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology where the virus behind COVID-19 pandemic likely began, the Office of Director of National Intelligence said in releasing new documents on the controversy.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, on her last day in office, said the pandemic caused tremendous pain for millions of Americans and the latest document release comes amid years of “lies, censorship and cover-ups.”
“The tactics used to hide the truth are straight from the deep state playbook: politicized self-serving leaders like Dr. Fauci covered up their own wrongdoing and abuses of power, manipulated intelligence, lied to Congress, and undermined a duly elected president by restricting his access to vital facts needed to keep the country safe. It’s time the American people learn the real story,” Ms. Gabbard said in a statement.
Hundreds of declassified intelligence documents, many of them heavily redacted, were released Thursday. They reveal new details of the internal debate among federal officials and intelligence analysts over whether the COVID virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute or was caused naturally from a virus-infected animal in Wuhan.
The ODNI said in a statement that the documents show Dr. Fauci worked with “politicized career leadership” at intelligence agencies to suppress “the truth” about the source of the pandemic coming from the Wuhan Institute.
The office also said the documents reveal that Dr. Fauci directed U.S. funding for dangerous virus research in China.
“These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating [intelligence community] assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research,” the ODNI statement said.
Dr. Fauci did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
Sen. Rand Paul, who clashed with Dr. Fauci during Senate testimony and his denials of working with Chinese virologists, praised the document release. The senator said he had referred Dr. Fauci to the Justice Department several times for criminal prosecution over the alleged misstatements.
“This release includes additional documents revealing the truth about the lab-leak origins and Fauci’s lies to Congress under oath,” said Mr. Paul, Kentucky Republican, said in social media posts.
Outgoing President Joe Biden issued a pardon to Dr. Fauci hours before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2025.
A document on a CIA briefing with Dr. Fauci in June 2021 highlighted his interest in WIV work on pangolin coronavirus research. Dr. Fauci, according to the document, suggested the intelligence investigators contact specific scientists who “have advocated for features of the virus that they judge to be consistent with a natural origin.”
The released documents detail complaints against Dr. Fauci from an intelligence agency whistleblower who charged that as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Fauci misled Congress in testifying that the U.S. never funded dangerous gain-of-function virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Intelligence agency documents also reveal government officials engaged in a concerted effort, along with U.S. scientists, to cover up reports and assessments that a leak of a genetically manipulated virus from the Wuhan lab set off the pandemic.
The pandemic killed about 1.2 million people in the U.S. and an estimated 7 million worldwide.
One document, a State Department cable from 2018, states that the National Institutes of Health was “a major funder, along with the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), of SARS research by the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Shi Zhengli and Cui Jie.”
The SARS virus is scientifically similar to the SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID. Ms. Shi was the Wuhan laboratory’s lead researcher on bat coronaviruses.
One released document that made a case for the COVID virus leaking from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a May 2020 report from a special intelligence unit at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
The report stated that all the conditions for “an accidental release of a laboratory-modified coronavirus — specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors — were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in mid-to-late 2019.”
The conditions included the presence of precursor viruses with “high genetic similarity” the COVID virus; lab work on genetic modification of bat coronaviruses; lab testing on viruses to cause human disease; and accidents with coronavirus materials from chance or negligence, the Lawrence Livermore report stated.
The latest document release was required under a section of the fiscal 2026 Defense Authorization Act that was signed into law in December.
ODNI said the declassification process involved testimony from several intelligence agency whistleblowers who reported they were the target of official retaliation after they reported that analyses has been skewed on the virus origin.
The activities to hide the laboratory origin included what ODNI stated was a “clear pattern” of suppressing dissenting views, silencing critics and burying evidence in ways that violated the integrity of intelligence assessments and “disserved the American people.”
According to the statement, Dr. Fauci had close relations with intelligence analysts during the pandemic, which began in late 2019, that gave him a key role in controlling information on the virus origins.
Dr. Fauci funded risky bat virus research that was “linked to big pharma” in pursuing universal vaccines worth trillions of dollars, the statement said.
He also worked as a behind-the-scenes adviser who hand-picked experts in pushing intelligence agencies to endorse natural origin from an animal theory on COVID and hide dangerous research in China, the statement said.
“Throughout the pandemic, Fauci and politicized leaders within the IC created a self-serving circular reporting loop,” the statement said. “This input shaped official intelligence assessments, which were then publicly cited as scientific consensus to refute the lab-leak theory.”
Dr. Fauci also promoted what ODNI said was a “fraudulent” medical paper that was used as a key basis for intelligence assessments.
Intelligence agency leaders threatened analysts who favored the laboratory leak theory that they faced being passed over for promotion for holding that view, the statement said.
“The message was clear: disagreement with the manipulated finding would derail careers,” the statement said, adding that whistleblowers were silenced through “an atmosphere of intimidation.”
In April, Dr. David Morens, a former senior advisor to Dr. Fauci at the National Institutes of Health, was indicted on charges of violating federal record-keeping laws and concealing emails on the virus origins.
The documents included an intelligence official’s response to a Jan. 12, 2022, article in The Washington Times quoting retired Marine Corps Maj. Joseph P. Murphy, who worked with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and stated in a memorandum that his study of the COVID virus led to the conclusion it was produced from vaccine research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Maj. Murphy had informed the Pentagon inspector general that he believed the virus was produced by the nongovernment organization EcoHealth Alliance, the National Institutes of Health, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology from gain-of-function research outlined in a Pentagon grant proposal.
“SARS-CoV-2 is an American-created recombinant bat vaccine, or its precursor virus,” Maj. Murphy stated in an Aug. 13, 2021, memo. “It was created by an EcoHealth Alliance program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as suggested by the reporting surrounding the lab leak hypothesis.”
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